How to Remove Pills from Hand Knit Socks

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I spent forever knitting these Nebula socks and I absolutely love them, but after several trips through the washer they have become covered in pills and fuzz:

I finally sat down this morning and removed all that gunk with my trusty fabric shaver!  Yay!  These shavers are so great for making your handknits look brand new again.  I’d caution you not to use them too often – especially on your socks.  Every time you shave the fabric little fibers are removed.  This makes the fabric a little more weak, so you’ll get holes faster.  But, when your socks look as bad as mine did, it’s worth the risk.

Here’s an after pic:

There are a few other options for doing this other than the shaver.  One is a sweater stone – I have one of these and I don’t care for it – it’s like a gritty block (almost like a pumice stone?) – it takes care of the pills but I feel like it tugs too much on the fibers and just makes the fabric fuzzier than it was to begin with; however, I have heard that the stone is less damaging to the fabric than the electric shaver.

There is also a pill remover tool called a Gleaner that is similar to the sweater stone, but it gives you three choices of “grit” so you can match it to the delicateness of the fiber. I think even the finest gleaner edge is too rough for sock yarn, so the shaver is still my tool of choice.  However, the gleaner is AMAZING for getting cat hair off of pretty much anything – it was well worth the price, even though I don’t use it often for my knits.